Deregulation is off the agenda, but air quality is firmly on it and will be for some time. Hopefully new buses minister Jesse Norman will prove a strong advocate for buses as a solution
I may have been a bit hasty when, last week, I suggested that debate about bus policy was likely to fade away now that the Bus Services Act has secured Royal Assent.
That’s true in the sense that the protracted debate about the merits of deregulation should now fade, and it’s this issue that lies at the heart of bus policy. But it’s also true that there are many other aspects of policy which, while not directly related to bus policy per se, have a major impact on bus operators.
I’m talking about air quality, an issue that’s rapidly rising up to the top of the policy agenda, even if it hasn’t got there already. It’s an issue that could have major implications for bus operators. The government was forced to issue a consultation paper on the matter before the general election, and from the enquiries I’ve been making it hasn’t gone down too well.
Knee-jerk reactions
So far as bus operators are concerned, I think it is crystal clear that diesel buses are here to stay for quite some time yet, and it’s important that ministers don’t have some kind of knee-jerk reaction that seeks to portray diesel engine buses as some kind of evil.
I can’t claim to be an expert on the issue, but my understanding is that the modern Euro 6 diesel engines are pretty clean, thank you very much, and rather more clean than some of the hybrid buses that have been in operation for some years now.
In the context of this particular debate, I hope ministers don’t seek to portray buses as a problem. On the contrary, they are a solution, not least given that the average bus carries something like 10-12 people while a car carries, on average, 1.5. So let’s make sure that ministers and officials focus their attention on where the problem really lies.
Root for Lillian
This all just goes to show that when one policy debate is closing down, another one opens up.
I can see that the bus industry will have a bit of work to do to ensure that buses don’t get demonised in the context of the debate about air quality. I hope that in all the discussions in and around Whitehall on this issue Jesse Norman, our new buses minister, speaks up loud and clear for the bus operators as a solution, not a problem.
Last week I mentioned that we would probably soon be seeing a new Chair to the Transport Select Committee.
The appointments of the Committee Chairs is taking longer than I had thought, but in the case of the Transport Committee we have four Labour MPs who have put their names into the ring to replace Louise Ellman – Lillian Greenwood, Gavin Shuker, Bridget Prentice and Geraint Davies.
Lillian Greenwood will be well known to the industry given her previous positions in the shadow transport team. I hope for all our sakes she gets the job.
